


sit in this storm with you

by seventymilestobabylon



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, Elias Bouchard Being a Bastard, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, M/M, No beta we die like archival assistants, still trying to get my main beta into this podcast but I will triumph in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventymilestobabylon/pseuds/seventymilestobabylon
Summary: Jon is absolutely not prepared to see Martin Blackwood cry.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 30
Kudos: 346





	sit in this storm with you

**Author's Note:**

> oh nothing just 4000 words of Jonmartin softness to help the author cope with her S3 emotions
> 
> title is from a song called "Storm" [(link)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8HMQSWPSzk) and it contains the lines "keeping one foot out the door / doesn't work for me anymore" so I am, obviously, doing just fine

Jon is looking for Martin. He needs some follow-up on a case to do with another fire, but that isn’t why he’s looking for Martin. He has a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and so he’s looking for Martin, and he does not want to look that feeling in the eye because he isn’t sure if it means he wants Martin to make him a cup of tea or he thinks something is wrong with Martin and he needs to make sure that it isn’t.

Though it’s work hours, and he hasn’t given Martin any investigative tasks that would take him out of the office, he can’t find him anywhere in the Archives. Not in his office. Not in the kitchen, making tea. Not in Artefact Storage, where Martin isn’t allowed to go, because—because he isn’t. Jon doesn’t want him down there, or Tim either, or any of them. And Martin wouldn’t go into the tunnels, he doesn’t think. Oh, God, he doesn’t want to go down into the tunnels, but he is looking for Martin and there isn’t anywhere else—

His eye falls on Elias’s door, which is shut. There isn’t much to choose between knocking on Elias’s door and going down into the tunnels.

No. That’s a stupid thought. The slick wet slide of Elias’s thoughts into his own mind is—unpleasant, certainly, but not life-threatening. When Elias does it, he’s acting for the good of the Institute, whatever he believes that to be. It isn’t random. It isn’t malicious. It isn’t mindless hungry worms that burrow into Jon’s body and leave tracks across his skin that he’ll never be rid of. He swallows hard and knocks on the door.

“Come in,” says Elias.

Jon enters the room. For a moment, he’s awash in relief: There _is_ Martin, after all, the reassuring bulk of him sat on the chair opposite Elias, his back to the door. “I need—”

Elias raises an eyebrow at him, which cuts off the rest of his sentence and gives him time to understand the noise he’s hearing. Martin is crying: a soft, wet, hopeless sound that goes on and on. He doesn’t turn around or try to cover it up. He just sits there, and cries, and cries.

“—Martin,” Jon finishes. “Er—for a job. Statement 160927. I need records from the firefighters, as well as the coroner’s office.”

There is a box of tissues next to Elias’s keyboard, just out of Martin’s reach. If Elias nudged them forward at all, then Martin could dry his eyes, but Elias doesn’t. Jon’s eyes are fixed on that box of tissues.

“Martin?” says Elias, brisk, as if nothing is wrong.

Martin says, almost inaudibly, “Please don’t.”

Jon recoils. Even before the motion is completed, he understands his mistake. Elias is a sadistic bastard, and he has always liked to remind them that they belong to him.

“Why, Jon.” Elias’s voice is very smooth. “Does it trouble you that much to see our Martin indisposed?”

 _What are you doing to him?_ Jon wants to say; he wants to say, _Leave him alone_ ; or something fatally stupid like, _Take me instead._ He doesn’t. “Pull yourself together, Martin,” he says, every inch the Archivist. “I need you to do your job. You can fall apart at the weekend.”

Martin is still crying, in shuddery breaths. Now and then there is a tiny voiced sob that makes Jon want to burn the building down. How long has he been—

Elias laughs. “I’m afraid it’s my fault, Jon. Martin required a reminder of where he came from and how he can benefit by being here, in the good graces of the Institute. Would you like to see? I think you might find it instructive.”

Martin’s whole body flinches. “Don’t,” he chokes out. “Please. Elias. Please.”

“If you think it’s relevant to my work,” says Jon carelessly. It’s taking everything he has to keep his face smooth. His hands don’t seem to belong to him; they want to reach out and touch Martin’s shoulders, anchor him in something that isn’t—this. Something that doesn’t hurt. He wants to cut Elias’s throat. He wants to beat Elias to death with a pipe.

“Please,” says Martin, desolate. “Please, please don’t. I’ll do anything.”

Elias opens his mouth, and Jon says, “As long as ‘anything’ includes tracking down the damned coroner’s notes for case 160927—” He almost finishes it up by saying “I don’t care what you do,” but he thinks that would push too far past Elias’s credulity.

Martin’s voice falls to a whisper when he says, “Please don’t hurt him.”

Oh God, no. Elias’s eyes flick up to Jon’s face, and Jon—heart pounding—has just enough presence of mind to furrow his eyebrows and mouth, _Who?_

To his aching relief, Elias rolls his eyes. “Suppose you give us five more minutes alone, Jon,” he says, “and then I’ll send Martin to your office for the particulars of his assignment.”

Jon’s thoughts race. The idea of leaving Martin alone with Elias—Martin, who never believed Jon capable of murder, who cuts raggedy holes in his jumper sleeves for his thumbs, who lights up for even the smallest compliment—terrifies him to the point of nausea. But that’s, of course, the test. If he leaves Martin to be tortured, then it will prove that he doesn’t care. If he doesn’t leave—God, he doesn’t want to think about it. He does not want to be made into another weapon that Elias will use to break Martin down. More than that, he does not want Elias to believe that Martin is a weapon he can use against Jon. _That_ thought almost puts the breath out of his lungs.

“Fine,” he says. He is proud that his voice does not shake. “As long as it _is_ five minutes; I do actually need my research assistants available to assist me with research.”

Walking out of that room is the worst thing he has ever done. It’s worse than leaving his childhood bully to be eaten up, worse than failing to notice that Sasha had been replaced, worse than destroying the table and letting loose the monsters. At least he was ignorant, then, of the import of what he was doing. This is... Closing the door and leaving Martin alone with Elias is... All the way back to his office, he fancies that he can still hear those quiet, hopeless sobs. He doesn’t want to know—he _fiercely_ doesn’t want to know—what Martin sounds like when he cries.

_Please don’t hurt him._

__It’s very characteristic of Martin, Jon thinks, of Martin’s particular brand of stupidity, to think that there could be any benefit in his being hurt rather than Jon. Only one of them is the Archivist, only one of them is damaged already beyond the possibility of repair. If anyone should be making those noises, if anyone should be laid open weeping by the chilly invasion of Elias’s mind, it should be Jon. It’s patently fucking obvious it should be Jon, anyone would— Tim would agree, for one. Sasha would, if she were alive. Melanie. Daisy.

He is in his office. He is gripping the edge of his desk so hard his fingers cramp. Hasn’t it been five minutes? Is this a test? Is Elias waiting to see if Jon will come back for Martin? Christ, he doesn’t think he’s capable of doing otherwise, if Martin doesn’t come. He sits down at the desk, so that he can be seen to be working if Elias comes in, and drags a statement sightlessly forward. It’s not the right one. What did he do with the one he was working on? The fire. If Elias brings Martin in, Jon needs to have the information to hand, so Elias doesn’t see that he cares more about Martin than this case or any case or the whole ugly impossibility of the Magnus Archives.

No, that can’t be right. Martin is a colleague. That’s what Martin is, a colleague, an officemate, not even a proper friend. (He hears again the whispered, agonized _Please don’t hurt him._ ) Of course he cares more about his colleagues, about people, than a building full of papers and curses and horrible memories.

(where is Martin where the fuck is Martin what the fuck is Elias doing to him)

It isn’t just the memories he pulls out of you. It’s the way he filters your thoughts through himself, like infusing your drinking water with wormwood. The sick, bitter wrongness of it, the _intrusion._ The way it makes you question if there is a self for you to be at all.

A knock on the door makes Jon jump. He schools his face ruthlessly, picks up a pen. “Come in.”

It’s Martin. It’s _only_ Martin, and Jon lets out a long breath. He tries to stand, but his knees go wobbly, and Martin—his eyes and nose red—takes two anxious steps forward. “Are you all right?” he says.

“Am _I_ —” But the question is enough to get Jon to his feet and across the room. He puts a hand under Martin’s elbow, steers him to the squashy armchair, and puts him down in it. Martin won’t look at him. He smears at his face with the heel of his hand and stares down at his lap miserably. Jon begins, “What did Elias—”

“You needed things doing?” Martin says. He’s trying so hard to sound normal but he won’t meet Jon’s eyes.

“Martin.”

A shiver ripples through Martin, and Jon goes to his knees, ducking his head low enough to catch Martin’s gaze. “I don’t want you to—” Martin says.

He reaches out to push Jon away, and Jon catches his arm. Martin does not insist, so they stay that way, frozen, Jon’s fingers curled around the delicate skin of Martin’s wrist, his eyes intent on Martin’s face. His unruly heart is pounding and he doesn’t know why. Before he can think about it, he presses his mouth to the center of Martin’s palm, and hears the sharp, hissing intake of breath above him. He folds Martin’s fingers around the kiss, uses both hands to set the resulting fist back in Martin’s lap, and lets go.

The clock ticks out the seconds very loudly. Jon is acutely conscious of himself as body, the pointed narrow lines of his bones, the scars that mark him, the ever-deepening shadows under his eyes. Martin is so very whole, and he is—not, and he doesn’t know why he just did that, except that he wanted Martin to understand—

He doesn’t know what he wanted Martin to understand. Maybe something about the necessity to remain whole. The urgency that Jon feels for Martin to protect himself. _Himself,_ not Jon.

Martin’s breathing is irregular, and Jon experiences a spike of fear that he has made him cry. So he looks up. Martin isn’t crying. His face is wide open, completely unguarded. Jon would have said that Martin’s face was never guarded in the first place, but he sees now that it was a little, because here is an expression Jon has never seen there before. Stunned and hungry. His lips are parted, and color has risen to his cheeks.

“Look,” Jon says.

“Why did you—” Martin sounds entirely bewildered. He shifts his gaze to his fist, which he cradles in his other hand as if it contains something precious and fragile that he can entrust to nobody else. 

Jon cannot bear it. He can’t bear it.

In a sudden burst of energy, Martin says, “Look, if you— I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me, all right? I took my chances, and I knew there was a chance it wouldn’t come out right and it didn’t, and that’s my own fault for being so stupid. I don’t need you to feel—” His voice cracks. “I don’t need your pity.”

Jon has no idea how to answer that. The gulf between _pity_ and what he actually feels is impassable. “Elias is a bastard,” he spits out, instead.

“Yeah.” Martin gives a rather wet laugh. “Yeah, he is.”

“Shall I make you some tea?” Jon suggests. It’s all he can think of. What he wants is to be able to say, _Elias won’t ever touch you again,_ but he can’t make that promise.

“I don’t— No.” Martin must see that Jon is slightly stung by the refusal, because he adds, “Just—stay a minute. If it’s not too—if you don’t mind? I don’t want to be alone.”

Jon doesn’t mind, but he also doesn’t know what to do with himself. He can’t stay where he is, having just _kissed Martin’s hand._ After an uncomfortable pause, Martin scoots over in the big squashy armchair and looks at Jon very nervously under his eyelashes.

He’s actually never used the chair much. It’s massive, miles too big for him, and he always feels like an idiot sat there using up about a quarter of the available chair space. But with Martin in it—it’s just— But he doesn’t want Martin to burst out again into nervy insecurity, so he clambers into the space Martin has made for him, draws up his knees. He feels stupid. He must look really, really stupid. His elbow is jabbing into Martin’s side, so he shifts a bit, trying to be less angular.

“God you’re bony,” Martin says.

“Oh, shut up.”

Bowing to the obvious solution, Jon removes that arm and puts it over the back of the chair. Martin lets out a small, surprised noise and then—there isn’t another word for it—snuggles into Jon’s shoulder, sliding down the chair to compensate for the difference in their height. Something nascent and warm unfurls in Jon’s chest, and he puts one leg down to give Martin more space. His heart is beating too fast, but he is supposed to be being comforting (not his strong suit, really) so he takes in deep breaths, encouraging Martin to match them.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, after a while. The alternative to asking is to fall asleep. Having so much of Martin’s weight on him is much the same as lying under a weighted blanket, except a great deal more personal. Normally he would hate it, but he... doesn’t hate this.

Martin heaves in a sigh. “He caught me in Artefact Storage.”

Jon goes cold.

“Don’t, all right?” Martin sounds weary. “I’ve already been read the riot act about how stupid it was to go down there, and I didn’t touch anything, so you can save the lecture. I just—Gertrude had some files about an orb or a crystal ball or-- Dunno, she wasn’t that clear really, but she thought it might get her a way out of the Archives, and I wanted to look for it.”

Gingerly, Jon lets his arm wrap about Martin’s shoulder. It eliminates all remaining space for plausible deniability. He isn’t just sitting next to Martin, he’s _holding_ him, and Martin is terribly warm and a little shaky, and some of the tension goes out of him at Jon’s touch.

“Anyway, Elias found me, and he hauled me back up to his office and—” Martin twists a little, trying to see Jon’s face, but it’s a bad angle, so he slumps down again and cuddles closer against Jon’s chest. “Has he ever done that to you? Like made you remember how you felt on the worst days of your life, and then just—turned the volume up on all of it?”

“Yes.”

“And proper—all the way up, like blowing out the speakers up.”

“Yes.” Jon doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want it to have happened to Martin. A thick strand of hair has fallen across Martin’s face, and Jon reaches up with his free hand to smooth it behind his ear.

Martin shivers.

“Sorry,” says Jon.

“No. It’s nice. You’re being—” Martin turns his face into Jon’s chest and half-smothers the words against his clothes. “—really really nice. Do you not have to work?”

Right now, Jon wants to take all of his work, every statement and every tape recorder, and cram it down Elias’s throat. “No.”

Martin still has his fingers curled protectively round the palm Jon kissed.

Jon says, “If I could find you a way out of this, would you go?”

“Course.” Martin sounds surprised that he would ask. “Wouldn’t you?”

 _Not without you,_ Jon thinks. Not without Tim and Melanie and Basira, either, because however much of a prick Jon is, he’s nowhere near enough of one to leave anyone in Elias’s clutches. But really, really not without Martin. “I’m going to try to find something to bargain with, something Elias wants. I don’t know what yet. But if I get it, I need to know that you’ll leave when I say.”

“God yeah, of course.” Martin sniffs, starts to raise his fisted hand to his mouth to wipe his nose, sets it down again, and sniffs more enormously. “D’you think there’s something like that? That he wants badly enough to let us go?”

Jon can think of absolutely nothing to say to that. He’s silent for so long that Martin twists round again, properly this time, wriggles himself upright so he can look in Jon’s face. “No,” he says, very definitely. “No. Bugger that. Don’t even think about it. D’you hear me?”

Jon jerks a resentful shoulder.

“If you get him to let me leave, just me, not you, I won’t go. I won’t go and you’ll have wasted all your— Yeah, you can stuff it. Whatever you’re thinking of trading to Elias, it better be something that gets us all out because I’m not leaving without you.” Martin is so close that his breath puffs in Jon’s face, the unmistakable smell of bergamot from all his bloody tea. The next moment, he’s pulled Jon into a tight embrace, burying his face in Jon’s shoulder.

Jon hates himself for sinking into the hug, but he does, he lets himself drown in it, brings his free hand to cradle the back of Martin’s head, tips his drawn-up leg into Martin’s side so they’re touching all over. He can’t, he cannot have this, the easy affection, the comfort of this. He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t know how to begin to deserve it, but he’s too weak to pull away. He can’t remember the last time someone touched him like this.

One of Martin’s hands is splayed across Jon’s shoulder blades, but Jon can feel the other one too, pressed against Jon’s lower back in an unmistakable closed fist. That’s the kind of stubborn he is, keeping his hand shut tight into a fist because Jon—

Because Jon—

Martin pulls back. His eyes are still red. His right hand is still closed in its fist. Jon is practically perched on the arm of the chair, and he feels terribly exposed, as if he and not Martin has been caught weeping in Elias’s office. Protectively, he draws both legs back up to his chest, but he doesn’t stop looking at Martin. He has never looked at someone so much; he has never been looked at so much. It would be less frightening to be thrown from a Paris skyscraper.

“I, um—” Martin swallows, clearly gathering his courage, then puts his closed fist on Jon’s knees. “Why did you do that?”

Jon’s voice catches. “I—”

“Cause like—I know I’ve been—”

“You haven’t.”

“—a bit obvious— Come on, Jon. Everyone _knows_ that I—you know.”

Jon gives in to a greedy impulse, and touches Martin’s cheek with the backs of his fingers, because he wants to see Martin’s face do what it did when Jon kissed his hand. And it does, because Martin is—good, and dear, and everything Jon isn’t, and that is why, when Jon touches him, his face goes horribly, addictingly soft.

“If you don’t mean it…” Martin is whispering now, the way he might whisper in a church. “Don’t, if you don’t mean it. I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.”

“Yes,” Jon says dryly. “You’ve said. I’m not sure how I can be clearer.”

Martin gives a strangled laugh. “You could—er. You might—um. Er.”

Yes, he might. He tips his knees forward and lets the rest of him follow, so that he’s kneeling half on top of Martin’s legs. Their faces are very close. Their _mouths_ are. Jon can see the goldy flecks in Martin’s eyes. He doesn’t remember the last time he kissed someone, the last time he wanted to. Martin is shaking. Jon waits.

“Okay, that’s—um.”

“Clear?” says Jon softly.

Martin kisses him.

It’s very soft, very careful, as if with each kiss Martin is asking a question and then waiting courteously for Jon’s reply. He’s shivering a little under Jon’s touch, but his hands—one cupping Jon’s neck, the other a feather-light touch at his waist—are undemanding.

Georgie always thought Jon didn’t like kissing, but he loves it actually, the way it’s very intimate but also very deeply weird. What he doesn’t like, has never liked, is the tenuous feeling of demand that used to make him pull away well before he wanted to. He knows that he’s not nice to kiss for that reason. When someone realizes that the thrumming tension in him isn’t a request for more but dread of it, they tend to lose interest. But with Martin… It’s the difference between being pushed off a Paris skyscraper and—oh, God, Jon doesn’t know, one of those horrible flying sports that Americans do. Hang-gliding?

When he kisses the corner of Martin’s lips, Martin shuts his eyes. When he gets his mouth open, Martin trembles. When he licks in, Martin makes a delicious sort of strangled noise in the back of his throat, and his fingers clench around the bottom hem of Jon’s jacket. But he doesn’t push, he doesn’t grab for more than Jon’s offering; he doesn’t even try to take off Jon’s glasses, although they are making the whole affair a trifle awkward. It makes Jon feel warm, and it makes him want to _devour_ Martin (in a strictly non-eldritch way).

“Is this okay?” Martin pulls back to ask.

Jon’s thoughts are all over the place, and he tries to draw them back together. Before he quite has it, Martin’s face relaxes into a smile, and he says, “God, that was nice. You’re so lovely, oh my God. But, sorry, um—yeah, you all right? With, um, that?”

“So—” Jon is surprised to find that he’s out of breath. He fills his lungs and tries again. “Not clear then.”

And, because he can see that Martin is misinterpreting him, he says, “Possibly I should be clearer?” and watches the blossoming of delight across Martin’s face.

And because he can’t help it: “I do mean it, Martin.”


End file.
